All The Fiends Of Hell by Adam L.G. Nevill

The red night of bells heralds global catastrophe. Annihilation on a biblical scale.

Seeing the morning is no blessing. The handful of scattered survivors are confronted by blood-red skies and an infestation of predatory horrors that never originated on earth. An occupying force intent on erasing the remnants of animal life from the planet. 

Across the deserted landscapes of England, bereft of infrastructure and society, the overlooked can either hide or try to outrun the infernal hunting terrors. Until a rumour emerges claiming that the sea may offer an escape. 

Ordinary, unexceptional, directionless Karl, is one of the few who made it through the first night. In the company of two orphans, he flees south. But only into horrifying revelations and greater peril, where a transformed world and expanding race of ravening creatures await. Driven to the end of the country and himself, he must overcome alien and human malevolence and act in ways that were unthinkable mere days before. 

All The Fiends of Hell is a novel of alien horror from the four times winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel.

Adam Nevill is one of the best writers of horror fiction working today, especially at novel length. Two things in particular distinguish his work: its emotional intensity – as another reviewer has said, you don’t read one of his novels, you live it – and Nevill’s constant determination to break new ground and explore new territory. All The Fiends Of Hell more than measures up in both departments.

Fiends is Nevill’s take on the alien-invasion novel – something you’re more used to seeing in the science fiction section of the bookstore, but there’s always been an overlap between horror and SF, as in the monsters of H.P. Lovecraft, beings from distant worlds and other dimensions who are alien in the fullest sense of the term: fundamentally unknowable, their ways and intentions incomprehensible to humans. These invaders are very much in the Lovecraftian vein but with the kind of eerie, nightmarish monstrousness only Nevill can do. Exactly what they’ve done and how remains a mystery, and Fiends is all the more frightening for it.

Fiends also shares the nightmarish qualities of the original alien-invasion story, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. As in Wells’ novel, the aliens are engaged in a war of extermination, and a brutally one-sided one at that, with human civilisation incapable of resisting, let alone defeating, the invaders. Most of the population is cleared off the planet in a single sweep, sucked up into the sky in a nightmarish version of the evangelists’ Rapture; the only survivors are those who were debilitated by a virus that’s been going round. As in War of the Worlds, germs save the lives of the remaining humans – but in Nevill’s tale, the respite is only temporary, because the red light that the invaders inhabit is spreading relentless across the land and will soon cover the entire country.

Karl, having become the unwilling guardian of the orphans Hayley and Jake, flees southward, desperately trying to keep ahead of the relentlessly encroaching red light that suffuses more and more of the earth’s surface. On his way, he also has to contend with human evil in the form of the brutish, terrifying Bob, who abducts Hayley, sending Karl on a quest to find him and rescue the girl. He knows it’s almost surely futile, but so, too, is even trying to find a refuge from the red light.

Any new book from Adam Nevill is always a cause for rejoicing, and this one is no exception. Go and grab yourself a copy of All The Fiends Of Hell now. Before the red light comes.

You can buy the paperback direct from the author's site here. Or you can get the ebook from Amazon UK or US.